


for now i am winter

by crucios



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Gen, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 11:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16952823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crucios/pseuds/crucios
Summary: When Nico wakes in his own bed there’s a short and almost perfect moment of ignorance before his brain kicks in and it all hits him like a double-barrelled shot to the gut.





	for now i am winter

**Author's Note:**

> I feel a bit awful for dedicating this to the Skam Italia discord because it’s utterly miserable. But alas. This one’s for you, pals.
> 
> Also, side-note: this is the first fic I have finished and published since 2015. I know, I'm amazed at myself too. I wanted to write something from Nico's perspective for personal reasons and voilà.

***

When Nico wakes in his own bed there’s a short and almost perfect moment of ignorance before his brain kicks in and it all hits him like a double-barrelled shot to the gut.

Milan.

It’s like trying to piece together broken memories after an inadvisable night spent drinking. He can only remember it in flashes. Fleeting moments of distorted time. Part of him wishes he could remember it in more than bits and pieces. Part of him is glad he can’t. The weight of the shame feels crushing enough without remembering the details. He can barely stand to be in his own head. Because he remembers how perfect it was. Until it wasn’t.

Maddi told him the details—as much as them as she managed to get out of Marti. Nico wishes she hadn’t. Wishes he didn’t have to have those words in his head. He wants to cry himself raw but he’s so devoid of energy that he doesn’t seem to have the capacity. He peeks his head out from under his blankets, afraid that the world might be on fire. It feels like it should be. But it isn’t.

His mum must have taken any potential sharp objects out of his room while he was sleeping – as if he wouldn’t just get up and go to the fucking kitchen if he was really determined – because even his glass he uses for water to take his meds has been replaced by a plastic cup. Like she’s child-proofing the house.

The apartment is too quiet. Nico wonders if this is what it really feels like—to be the last man on Earth. Because he is now, he supposes. Now that Marti thinks he’s broken and delusional too.

It makes him want to break skin. He’s half a heart lighter and exhausted. Tired of not being able to experience normal and universal emotions without everyone equating it to a symptom of a stupid fucking illness. Without it being twisted it into something ugly and illusory. It’s enough to drive him crazy—it _did_ drive him crazy.

Nothing about his love for Marti is ugly. Nothing about it was ever untrue. Nico wishes he could tell Marti that. He wishes Marti would believe him if he did.

He stares at the ceiling and thinks of giraffes. He thinks of Stefano Benni. _La giraffa ha il cuore lontano dai pensieri._ He had always loved that quote—felt it in his bones. Like someone out there finally understood that his disorder doesn’t dictate his heart. It makes him ache—that a stranger can understand but not the people he loves most.

He sleeps again because it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

***

When he next wakes, Nico sends Marti the quote. He fiddles with his phone on and off for twenty minutes or so after, waiting for the flash of a name. The tell-tale vibration against his hand. Something. Just a small thread of hope. Written proof that he hasn’t completely fucked up the only real thing in his life. But it never comes. He knows it’s too much to ask for. That he’s too much. He tosses his phone onto his desk and tries to ignore its silence.

After another hour of shut-eye, he gets up. He wraps himself in a suit of armour made out of blankets and shuffles over to his desk. The few steps it takes to get there feel like a marathon. He checks his phone in between sketching out giraffes – some big, some small, some with a tiny Nico and Marti sitting on their back – and starts over a dozen letters. _Dear Marti…_ No. He scrunches it up in his hands with a frown. _Elio…_ No. _Man of my dreams…_ No.

 _I love you. I’m so fucking sorry…_ Fuck.

He throws the pen at the wall in frustration and shucks himself back over to his bed, blankets in tow. They’re a castle now. Soft but fortified walls around him. He falls asleep in the tower.

When he blinks awake for a fourth time, Maddi is sitting in his desk chair. His walls weren’t as fortified as he thought, it turns out. She’s tapping at the keyboard on her phone—sending his mum a status update, Nico presumes.

“You can tell her that I’m not planning to kill myself with broken glass,” Nico says hoarsely. “Those plastic cups taste like shit.”

Maddi blinks up at him, surprised. Then she frowns like she thinks he shouldn’t say things like that out loud. “She’s worried about you. You put her through hell.”

And there it is. The guilt-trip. The “do you have any idea how difficult this is for us?” Nico is well aware that he’s a burden to live with. A cannonball chained to everyone’s fucking ankle and dragging them down. But he doesn’t need to be reminded at every opportunity.

“How do you feel?” Maddi asks the quiet.

Nico shrugs a non-answer. He feels like porcelain covered in crazing. Like if you were to look close enough you would be able to see the spider-webbed network of fine cracks across the surface of his skin. He wonders what would happen if he were to shatter.

His mum was probably right to take away the sharp objects.

His eyes wander anxiously over to his phone still sitting on the desk. He wants to check – wants to see – just in case. But he can’t make himself move.

“Has Marti…” He trails off. He knows the answer.

“No,” Maddi says shortly.

“Okay.” he says. And he can’t even be angry because he would leave himself too if he could.

Maddi waves her hand as if it will expel Nico’s broken heart. “It’s for the best.”

And Nico can’t stand to look at her. Hates her so much that he thinks he might choke on the bitter intensity of it. Because she _sent him away._

“Nico. It will pass.”

“He’s not a passing phase,” Nico snaps, quietly angry. Too exhausted to be loud about it. “He's—”

“What then?” Maddi demands tiredly. “Let me guess. A saviour? You thought he was going to save you?”

“No.” That’s not it. That was never it. Nico didn’t need Marti to save him, he just wanted him to—

“Love me,” Nico says finally. “I thought he was going to love me.”

Maddi huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “He doesn’t even know the real you, Nico.”

“He’s the only one who does,” Nico says. He remembers the way Marti looked at him in perfect clarity. He committed it to memory—a keepsake. He memorised Marti’s soft eyes and his unashamed smile. The way he would hold Nico in place and look at him and see him.

“He’s the only one who _sees_ me,” he continues finally. Softly. “The real me, and not this—this fucking illness. Or at least he did.”

Maddi takes a careful breath. "I’m not even sure _you_ know the real you right now.”

“I do,” Nico argues, but he already knows it’s pointless. “It’s you who doesn’t.”

And fuck, he is so completely tired of this. So tired of repeating himself and being switched off like he’s a broken record. He could be standing in a crowded room screaming it at the top of his lungs until his throat bleeds and still no one would fucking listen.

“Ni—”

“Get out,” he says, cold.

“Niccolò,” Maddi presses.

“I said get out.”

She sighs, like this is all such a chore. Like he’s a petulant child throwing a tantrum. “I told your mum I would keep an eye on you.”

Nico shrugs and buries himself back under the covers. “Then you can do it from the fucking living room.”

***

When Nico wakes up for the fifth time – sixth time? He’s losing count now – there’s a quiet stillness to the house. The kind that only settles in the small and deathly hours of the night. He clambers to switch the light on and watches as it illuminates the darkness shadow-by-shadow. There’s a package beside his bed with a pharmacy label printed on it that he steadfastly ignores. His mum must have picked up his prescription.

He looks at the space next to him—remembers Marti taking it up all those weeks ago. Remembers lying next to him and feeling the noise in his brain dim to barely audible background noise. Suddenly he can’t be in his own bed. He pulls himself out of his now-ruined castle of blankets to find somewhere safer but realises quickly that there isn’t anywhere.

His bed reminds him of soft and lazy kisses traded back and forth in the midday light. His desk of Marti valiantly trying to study while Nico played the nuisance. His sofa of marionette battles and hopeful will-we-won’t-we stolen glances. His kitchen of not-really-carbonara that tasted like sweat but was theirs. It’s one suffocating reminder after the other of everything he has lost.

His mum was right to take away the sharp objects.

***

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song of the [same name](https://open.spotify.com/track/3gSaPMyzNmbX3YDUvNCz7C) by Ólafur Arnalds.
> 
> You can find find me on [tumblr](http://crucios.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/akielon).


End file.
